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The web started without ads nor payments. And it was not worse when it was run mostly not for profit, quite the opposite.

sbarre 3y ago
Yeah but scale matters. The number of people who are on the Internet now, and therefore the cost to serve them (at least for major or popular platforms) is much higher than it was back in the early days of the web. I too long for those days, trust me, but it's just not a fair comparison.
- jabradoodle 3y ago
  More users is likely not more expensive per user; especially not given how much cheaper compute is now compared to 20 years ago. Clearly market forces often lead to a horrible product many of us don't like.
  - sbarre 3y ago
    Yeah sorry I just don't agree with that reasoning. Even if cost per user hasn't gone up (which I would actually bet it has, if we had a way to measure it), the total cost has gone up, and for a distributed non-commercial Internet you need to have a total cost, not a per-user cost, that is affordable for lots of people, not just for large market leaders, like it is today.
    - jabradoodle 3y ago
      To be fair, I don't agree with the original statement that the Internet started without adds, there were and still are some sites ran not for profit; but people always look to monetize. What I don't agree with is that the current state of affairs is necessary due to scale. We have adverts thrown in our faces and tracking everywhere we go, even on sites that could be profitable without it, simply because it is easy to do and almost all sites do it.
      - sbarre 3y ago
        Yes I agree with that, I think the over-reliance of tracking and ads has put us in a bad place, and has reduced the incentive and space to innovate. If all the time and money spent on figuring out tracking and ads had been put into micro-payments or distributed infrastructure, we'd be better off. But people want stuff "for free" and big companies don't want to give up control, so here we are.
d1str0 3y ago
I see this anecdote all the time as if it it really applies to the modern internet. I don’t think it really holds any bearing at all. The early days of the internet didn’t facilitate trillions in economic value like it is now. We can use that anecdote as inspiration but it really has no merit on the modern internet.
- littlestymaar 3y ago
  > The early days of the internet didn’t facilitate trillions in economic value like it is now. Neither does ads. The “trillions” in economic value are what's driven by the businesses using the internet for their business (say to order food, taxis, hotels, online games, etc.). The ads-based internet generate only a tiny fraction of that value. In fact, it only generates the low-quality value for which people aren't willing to pay anything. Youtube is probably the only exception here, and in fact if they decided to go fully paid, then many people would probably still pay for it, like they pay for Netflix.
- add-sub-mul-div 3y ago
  I've found it very relevant in the post Reddit and Twitter era. Instead of seeking out direct replacements for those sites I remember how much better the smaller, authentic internet was and break the habit of depending on the most popular sites just to go along with the crowd.
- CatWChainsaw 3y ago
  Ah yes, 'economic value', the ONLY worthwhile measure of goodness in the world. Trillions of dollars of shit is still shit, but shit is at least useful for compost where ads are useless at best.
- fuzzfactor 3y ago
  >early days of the internet didn’t facilitate trillions in economic value like it is now. With all those additional trillions there should be enough overall wealth for everyone to afford a completely ad-free internet now more than ever.
bobsmooth 3y ago
>The web started without ads nor payments. That lasted all of 5 seconds before banner ads and auto-playing ads became the norm. Bandwidth isn't free.
shric 3y ago
It might be neat if there was a top level domain that required no ads or paywalled content. i.e. anyone can register a domain, but if an ad or paywall is found on a site there's a warning -> suspension -> domain unregistered. Only donation links accepted but they cannot provide extra content. Hobbyist/amateur sites would thrive there as there would be attraction due to visitors being confident they won't be met with ads or paywalls. It would be awesome until the registrar inevitably caves and gradually bends the rules to increase revenue.
nvm0n2 3y ago
I 'member ads from the very first days of the net. Just that they were in people's sigs, or in the little grey button images that cluttered up the bottom of every websites, and tended to be ads for geek things so maybe they didn't feel like ads. But they were. Then of course almost immediately once bandwidth got fast enough there were image ads and an explosion of GeoCities sites.

sbarre 3y ago

Yeah but scale matters. The number of people who are on the Internet now, and therefore the cost to serve them (at least for major or popular platforms) is much higher than it was back in the early days of the web. I too long for those days, trust me, but it's just not a fair comparison.

jabradoodle 3y ago
More users is likely not more expensive per user; especially not given how much cheaper compute is now compared to 20 years ago. Clearly market forces often lead to a horrible product many of us don't like.
- sbarre 3y ago
  Yeah sorry I just don't agree with that reasoning. Even if cost per user hasn't gone up (which I would actually bet it has, if we had a way to measure it), the total cost has gone up, and for a distributed non-commercial Internet you need to have a total cost, not a per-user cost, that is affordable for lots of people, not just for large market leaders, like it is today.
  - jabradoodle 3y ago
    To be fair, I don't agree with the original statement that the Internet started without adds, there were and still are some sites ran not for profit; but people always look to monetize. What I don't agree with is that the current state of affairs is necessary due to scale. We have adverts thrown in our faces and tracking everywhere we go, even on sites that could be profitable without it, simply because it is easy to do and almost all sites do it.
    - sbarre 3y ago
      Yes I agree with that, I think the over-reliance of tracking and ads has put us in a bad place, and has reduced the incentive and space to innovate. If all the time and money spent on figuring out tracking and ads had been put into micro-payments or distributed infrastructure, we'd be better off. But people want stuff "for free" and big companies don't want to give up control, so here we are.

d1str0 3y ago

I see this anecdote all the time as if it it really applies to the modern internet. I don’t think it really holds any bearing at all. The early days of the internet didn’t facilitate trillions in economic value like it is now. We can use that anecdote as inspiration but it really has no merit on the modern internet.

littlestymaar 3y ago
> The early days of the internet didn’t facilitate trillions in economic value like it is now. Neither does ads. The “trillions” in economic value are what's driven by the businesses using the internet for their business (say to order food, taxis, hotels, online games, etc.). The ads-based internet generate only a tiny fraction of that value. In fact, it only generates the low-quality value for which people aren't willing to pay anything. Youtube is probably the only exception here, and in fact if they decided to go fully paid, then many people would probably still pay for it, like they pay for Netflix.
add-sub-mul-div 3y ago
I've found it very relevant in the post Reddit and Twitter era. Instead of seeking out direct replacements for those sites I remember how much better the smaller, authentic internet was and break the habit of depending on the most popular sites just to go along with the crowd.
CatWChainsaw 3y ago
Ah yes, 'economic value', the ONLY worthwhile measure of goodness in the world. Trillions of dollars of shit is still shit, but shit is at least useful for compost where ads are useless at best.
fuzzfactor 3y ago
>early days of the internet didn’t facilitate trillions in economic value like it is now. With all those additional trillions there should be enough overall wealth for everyone to afford a completely ad-free internet now more than ever.

bobsmooth 3y ago

>The web started without ads nor payments. That lasted all of 5 seconds before banner ads and auto-playing ads became the norm. Bandwidth isn't free.

shric 3y ago

It might be neat if there was a top level domain that required no ads or paywalled content. i.e. anyone can register a domain, but if an ad or paywall is found on a site there's a warning -> suspension -> domain unregistered. Only donation links accepted but they cannot provide extra content. Hobbyist/amateur sites would thrive there as there would be attraction due to visitors being confident they won't be met with ads or paywalls. It would be awesome until the registrar inevitably caves and gradually bends the rules to increase revenue.

nvm0n2 3y ago

I 'member ads from the very first days of the net. Just that they were in people's sigs, or in the little grey button images that cluttered up the bottom of every websites, and tended to be ads for geek things so maybe they didn't feel like ads. But they were. Then of course almost immediately once bandwidth got fast enough there were image ads and an explosion of GeoCities sites.